A few weeks ago, Adobe Systems was promoting its CS5 technology for building Flash applications that run on the iPhone.  But then Jobs struck back. He just doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone since it “performs too slow” and as always, Jobs will do whatever it takes to get his way.

Last week, Apple introduced an iPhone OS developer agreement, which prohibits developers to use third-party app compilers, including Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone tool. Lo-and-behold, Adobe comes out with an announcement that it will stop work on its efforts to bring Flash to the iPhone.

Flash isn’t lost in the mobile marketing space, though. Adobe is working closely with Google to bring Flash Player and Adobe Air to Android-based smartphones such as the Motorola Droid, Nexus One, HTC Incredible, and Sprint Evo and even upcoming non-Apple tablets.

Of course, with HTML5, you can do many of the same things that Flash can. Will the lack of Flash on the iPhone hinder your mobile marketing plans, or do you think Jobs is making the right move?

The post Adobe Turns Off iPhone Flash Development appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“The mobile arena holds so much promise and many marketers are excited but simply don’t know where to start,” said John Rizzi, president and CEO of e-Dialog, in a statement. “Nearly all mobile users are carrying a text-enabled phone right now,” he continued, “To ignore that reach would be missing a tremendous opportunity.”

M3 Mobile, founded in 2007, provides mobile strategists, best practices, reporting & tracking and data integration for its mobile marketing clients.

“We’re catering to an active audience,” said Jeff Hennion, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, e-commerce, of Dick’s Sporting Goods. “That means our marketing campaigns must be multifaceted to reach them with relevant messages wherever they may be. Mobile marketing ensures we can take full advantage of the reach the mobile channel offers and create a continuous relevant dialog with our customers.”

M3 will now operate as a subsidiary of e-Dialog. e-Dialog is a wholly owned subsidiary of GSI Commerce, a provider of services that enable e-commerce, multi-channel retailing and interactive marketing for large, business-to-consumer enterprises in the U.S. and internationally.

The post e-Dialog Acquires M3 Mobile for Mobile Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to a NY Times post earlier this week, big-name advertisers have already bought ad space on the iPad. Unilever, Toyota Motor, Korean Air and Fidelity have booked space on the New York Times’s iPad application, and Chase Sapphire already purchased all of their advertising units for two months starting at the iPad’s launch date. FedEx bought ad space from Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek.

iPad advertisements on print publishers’ applications cost $75,000 to $300,000 for a few months with some exclusivity, Phuc Truong, managing director of Havas Digital’s Mobext US, told the NY Times. Early excitement is due, in a large part, to tapping into the Apple buzz, which includes having advertisements show up in all Apple in-store demos of the product. Time is charging $200,000 for a single spot in its first eight issues designed for the iPad. The Wall Street Journal has four-month deals with several companies that cost $400,000.

However, the pricing may come down as the buzz wears off. For advertisers, measurement of success will be necessary to determine how much these ads are actually worth over the long run. “We’ve got to figure out what the measurements are,” Mark Ford, president of the Time Inc. News Group, told the New York Times. “It’s not how you measure print, it’s not, certainly, how you measure digital. It’s going to be different.”

The post Big Advertisers Pour Money into Early iPad Ads appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Nexus One, which can be used on any carrier as opposed to the iPhone, seems to be catching on with its open source Android operating system. The report released today by 3G.uk notes that the trend in Nexus One growth is expected to continue, despite talk by many that claim the phone is a hardware flop.

Peter Chou, CEO of NexusOne designer HTC, says it was a success. And maybe the latest sales figures are proving his unlikely conclusion. Earlier the phone has been plagued by customer service troubles, delayed overseas launches, and even poor early sales compared to its competitors.

Chou spoke with Forbes’ Elizabeth Woyke this week at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas. He said that the Nexus One is a success because of its innovative design that will attract other design and manufacturing business for HTC. But beyond additional business, he’s pleased with the NexusOne sales. “Considering Google didn’t do [standard] retail or marketing for it, the Nexus One is doing pretty well,” he told Forbes.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 1.211 billion units in 2009, down .9% from 2008, according to last month’s Gartner report. However, in the fourth quarter of 2009, sales grew 8% year over year. Globally, in 2009 Symbian led the pack in smartphone OS sales with 46.9% market share, down from 52.4% in 2008. Research in Motion came in second, with a 19.9% market share. The iPhone OS came in third, with 14.4% market share, compared to Android in sixth after Microsoft Windows Mobile and Linux, with just 3.9% market share.

The post Google Nexus One Outsells iPhone Globally in February appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Now that these early-stage start-ups have proven the interest in Location-based Services, Twitter and Facebook want in (joining Google, Apple and Nokia in trying to figure out how knowing a users’ location can lead to major mobile ad revenue.) In 2010, in the least, we’ll see both Twitter and Facebook’s take on LBS, a smart move for both companies which are experiencing massive mobile access growth.

Facebook, which according to a new comScore report saw access to its mobile browser grow by 112% in the past year, is expected to add location sharing in its users’ News Feeds, which may more than just intrude on the smaller companies’ courts. An article yesterday in the New York Times cited sources saying that Facebook would announce the news at its F8 developer conference in April.

Meanwhile, Twitter, which saw access to its mobile browser explode 347% in the past year, is already testing out a geolocation feature, which some users have seen in various beta forms as they go about their tweets. Foursquare, still a solid player in the game, will offer a free analytics tool and dashboard to give business owners information and stats about their visitors. These days, there isn’t a company in the consumer mobile space that isn’t interested in Location-based Services, and the market is ripe for innovation.

Knowing where users are is one of the most useful pieces of data available for mobile marketing. Mobile advertising and marketing companies like 1020 Placecast, which send customers offers on their phones when they are near a brick-and-mortar store of a brand they’ve opted to receive messages from, go about the mobile marketing in a different way then would a Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare.

For the social media upstarts of the world, especially Facebook and Twitter, the audience is much wider. For Facebook, the largest social network with over 400 million users who are mostly connected to their real-life friends and family, users will be most likely to share where they are at any given moment. On the other hand, the type of person willing to share their location with the masses on Twitter and Foursquare is still a rare breed. That breed may still be valuable to target and for marketers, but Facebook has the opportunity to offer Location-based Services to a much larger audience, and as always they will try their best to appease privacy and business needs.

Also in the game, big mobile players Google, Apple and Nokia are also working on understanding where advertising dollars and mobile location meet. Apple is looking to use its GPS data for mobile advertising and Nokia is a key player in the international LBS market with their Ovi maps coming integrated with their phones for free.

Google is trying desperately to get its social Buzz going, but it’s struggling to find the sweet spot in social media. TechCrunch states “It’s a mess,” and for the time being, I agree. However, Google’s Location-based Advertising patent won earlier this month may help them in the long run if they can ever get their buzz going. Filed six years ago, the patent is fairly broad. It covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad.

The post Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare Face Off in Location-based Services appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

One of the biggest challenges for barcode-based mobile coupons systems is getting retailers to purchase (or rent) a point-of-sale kiosk which can scan specific coupon company’s mobile barcodes. It isn’t clear yet what technology Target will be using for their mobile coupons, but as soon as I find out I will let you know.

Last year, JCPenny began a mobile coupon trial with Cellfire on point-of-sale coupon scanning kiosks in 16 of its Houston-area locations, but a Cellfire contact confirmed that they are not behind Target’s mobile coupons. However, Dan Kihanya, VP of Consumer Marketing at Cellfire, has been getting a bit of press related to the Target news, and was quoted in the USA Today article providing stats that mobile coupons are redeemed at a 5% to 20% rate, compared with about 1% for print coupons. U.K.-based Juniper Research recently forecast that more than 1-in-10 mobile subscribers in developed regions around the world will use mobile coupons by 2014, generating nearly $6 billion in redemption value.

Shoppers interested in Target’s mobile coupons will need to opt in by registering at the company’s online or mobile websites, or by texting the word “COUPONS” to 827438. When a customer opts in, they will receive text messages on their phone with a link to a mobile Web page with different barcoded offers. Offers will expire once they’ve been used and on dates listed. If you use Target’s mobile coupons this week, let me know what you think about the experience using them in a comment.

The post Target Stores to Bring Mobile Coupons Mainstream appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The mobile retail sector — which includes mobile coupon redemption values, smart poster fees and advertising spending in Juniper’s definition — will, however, see mobile advertising exceed coupon redemption values by 2013. Overall, the growth will be fueled by the adoption of high speed mobile broadband networks and SMS messaging giving retailers new opportunities to communicate with customers.

Report co-author Howard Wilcox writes, “Retailers have recognized that, even ahead of their wallets, people will usually make sure they do not leave home without their mobile device. The mobile channel offers merchants the opportunity to differentiate from their competition and acquire customers that become loyal.”

This report is a more optimistic view of the mobile marketing industry versus yesterday’s-released report by Outsell which noted that mobile marketing spend will be down 16% in 2010 according to advertisers pre-planned budgets.

Other findings from the Juniper report include:

• For brands and retailers, mobile offers the ability to change campaigns quickly (for example by time of day), and crucially the ability to track the success and customer acquisition rates.

• Usage of the mobile in a live shopping situation can be particularly effective – for example for product price comparisons

• While the mobile will be an effective channel for younger users who organize their lives around their mobile phones, older demographic groups are likely to be less receptive to using their mobiles in a retail situation

The post Juniper: Mobile Marketing Retail Market to Hit $12B by 2014 appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The app is the newest offering in the mobile marketing space for restaurants and eateries hoping to market to locals and visitors in the area. Yesterday, we covered 99 Apps, which is making $99 customized iPhone apps for restaurants and requiring a monthly fee if the restaurant wants to edit content and add deals. MealDeals is also big on the number 99, but this app will charge advertisers $99 per month for each campaign.

Restaurants in California, Chicago and New York have been piloting the platform for the past three months to promote new menu items and specials. Elio D’ Urzo, Owner of Sapore Italiano Ristorante in California was quoted in the release as saying, “MealDeals helps us get more exposure and extends our marketing efforts to reach many more customers.”

The system currently carries over 7000 web and mobile coupons. Over 30 restaurants in Denver are set to begin their mobile advertising campaigns on the platform soon. Users can download the application free on their mobile devices and find coupons for nearby restaurants.

The post MealDeals App Offers Mobile Coupons for Local Restaurants appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Of the $368 billion marketers will spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital, 30.3% will go towards print. “It’s a watershed moment,” lead author of the study and Outsell vice president Chuck Richard told Forbes.com. However, in regards to mobile marketing, “the proof isn’t in yet that mobile spending is all that effective,” Richard adds in the article. He gives the example of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit iPhone app which was the 33rd-highest-grossing mobile app in the iPhone store — 32,000 people paid $2 to download the app, netting $64k. However, one page of advertising in the issue makes $135,000. Richard obviously isn’t a fan of mobile marketing. “It’s time for a reality check,” he says.

But mobile marketing isn’t just about iPhone apps, and comparing the amount of money made from an iPhone app to the money made from print advertising is comparing apples to bananas. If you’re a brand, you don’t necessarily build an iPhone app just to make money from that app. The app may also be for increasing brand loyalty and seen as a digital PR move. Also, iPhone apps can make money later with in-app advertising that makes the app download fee worth more than the original purchase price.

The Outsell study collected data from 1,008 US advertisers in both consumer and B2B that marketers in December 2009. Stats that advertisers will spend 16% less on mobile in 2010 might scare mobile marketers, but it’s a natural pause after a growth spurt in the industry. Over the past year, there was a lot of excitement and experimentation in mobile marketing and advertising, and likely advertisers had unrealistic expectations in ROI in a still young smartphone market.

In the year’s to come, mobile advertising spend will likely go up. That’s according to me, not the Outsell study. The reason for this? Mobile is more than phones, and in the coming years we’ll see mobile-connected devices become more popular in the mainstream. Tablets, netbooks, portable network-connected gaming devices (like Sony’s upcoming PlayStation phone) will allow the rise in digital ad spending to leak into mobile and grow mobile ad spend in the next decade.

The post Digital Ad Spend to Surpass Print in 2010 for First Time appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The Charlottesville-based company, which just announced a $1 million Series A round of financing from private investors, focuses on developing mobile loyalty card programs for retailers, especially in college towns. Consumers using the technology can manage their loyalty cards from their mobile phones, track visits and redeem coupons and promotions from local businesses. Cardagin was selected as an AlphaPitch company for DEMOfall09.

Cardagin isn’t alone in the attempt to upload loyalty card programs to mobile phones. Companies like Scanaroo and Cardstar are working on similar offerings. According to Venture Beat, the company is launching its service in April starting with the University of Virginia’s population in Charlottesville, VA. After the launch, Cardagin plans to expand to other college towns in the region.

The management end of the loyalty program, as far as the business model goes, will be free. Cardagin plans to make money selling scanner-enabled kiosks to scan mobile phones. Again, we get into the problem of needing kiosk technology for the mobile phone coupon or loyalty program to work. Businesses will also be charged an additional fee of $1 per day to create and publish ads on the network. And Cardigan seems to think it may be able to charge consumers for special promotions outside of their opted-in loyalty programs. (*note: In a comment to this post, Cardagin CEO Rob Marsi added that the company plans to generate revenue by publishing and pushing mobile ads.)

Obtaining those kiosks will cost anywhere from $600 to $1000 per month year for the test period. Given the monthly marketing budget for small local businesses, spending any amount for one loyalty program might be pushing it. Yes, this replaces the cost of the business printing loyalty cards, but for many businesses the kiosk is still pricier than print. Also, lower-cost point-of-sale offerings will make it difficult for Cardagin to remain competitive using their current business model beyond the Virginia and Southeast college markets.

Cardagin has signed up five Charlottesville businesses for its initial 30-day test launch to ensure its systems can handle the traffic. Venture Beat notes that based on its revenue model, Cardagin must sign up 2,500 users in the first year (roughly 10% of the University of Virginia population) as well as 50 businesses per year, each of which use the ad components of the service conservatively.

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